Desolation (6 page)

As the years went by so the siren receded, first in frequency and then in volume. It still found its voice from time to time, but Cain's understanding of his father—what he had done, how, and why—seemed to temper it somewhat, and its influence faded away into bad memories and nasty dreams.

They took him to a circus. At seventeen he was older than most of the children there, and probably more knowledgeable than many of the adults. But he had never eaten candy floss, toffee apples, or doughnuts, and he had never abandoned himself to unrestrained laughter or awe. The Voice talked consistently, trying to calm Cain as new sights and sounds opened up around him. He had been on trips out of Afresh many times, but they were always well planned to avoid too much exposure at any one time. The circus blew all that away. As they guided him into the Big Top and found a seat, Cain began to feel overwhelmed. The Voice whispered in his ear. The Face held his hand. The crowd roared and laughed, a living, flexing mass of people dressed in every color imaginable, writhing and rolling with the show. A sickly sweet smell hung in the air, sticking to his clothes, finding its way through even when Cain covered his nose with his shirt.

The siren struck and he collapsed in on himself, shrinking in the seat as the Voice and Face frantically tried to pull him back.

They carried him outside, and when he clasped
his hands to his ears to exclude the roar of a thousand people he would never know, they did not try to talk him out of it. His two helpers placed him gently in the back of the car and clicked the door shut behind him. He opened his eyes at last and breathed in, content with the smell of old leather, the sight of the driver's seat in front of him, and the sound of the engine still ticking as it cooled from their vain journey here.

There were other times, progressively more successful. The Voice and Face learned a lot from that trip to the circus, and Cain was happy to go along with their new, more tempered plan to introduce the world to him. Even then the siren sometimes crashed in unexpectedly, shattering Cain where he stood and sending him back into the silent darkness, which he was beginning to believe was the only existence he could ever truly know.

With every step that Cain took, failure stalked him. Once or twice he turned around to see whether there were shadows where there should be none, listened for whispers behind garden walls and hedges, such was the sense of being observed. The Voice and the Face would not be pleased with this, he knew. He had to call sometime today to tell them how he was, and what could he honestly say?
The flat is fine, perfect, but I'm still afraid of everything
. He could not say that. He
would
not. And yet it was the truth.

He had spent six years at Afresh waiting for the day when he was old enough to leave and live on his own, put his broken childhood behind him. He
would never completely forget, and Afresh never pushed him into forgetfulness. But he would learn to live with what had happened and, perhaps given time, understand it. His father had loved him, they told him, but he had not known what love meant.

Cain walked faster. He looked up when he heard some children shouting and screaming in the park he had sat outside the night before. He paused at the fence, watching them at play on the few swings, slides, and climbing frames that had survived vandalism at the hands of local youths. They shouted in glee, and he mentally urged them to shout some more. They wore bright clothing, pinks and blues and colorful character T-shirts, and he scanned around for more sustenance for his eyes.

Put me down!
he thought.
Put me down now, you fuck!
But the siren was silent, its instigator hiding well back behind memory and nightmare. His father's image affected him at that moment as much as a faded photograph.

“Louder!” he shouted. “Play louder!” But his voice caused the children to pause, and their parents turned and regarded him with undisguised hostility. Cain smiled, trying to convey benevolence, but his expression angered them more. He hurried away, disturbed by their reaction.

He sought more. He had taken the coward's choice back at the crossroads, but he could still defy his father here. He would buy flavorful food and strong beer, a Mozart CD and some scented candles for his flat. Today he would sense life all around him. It would take time, he knew that. He could not rush headlong into the circus of life. He
had to introduce himself gradually, an act at a time. The high-wire balance of meeting new people, the lion-taming efforts of fending off his old fears.

And that was when he saw the clown.

She was sitting on the pavement outside the takeaway Cain had used the previous evening. He could tell it was a woman even under the clown's outfit; her breasts were heavy, the curve of her hips obvious. The takeaway was closed now, but the clown ate yellow, greasy rice from a foil container, and Cain had to wonder whether she had bought it or found it. She was a happy clown, with a smile drawn from ear to ear, eyes tall and wide, bright pink hat with a real red rose protruding from its tip. Her suit was baggy and extravagant, even though spilled grains of rice had spotted it with oil. That only added to the effect. It was a riot of color and texture, and Cain could not help smiling when he saw the beauty and wonder in that.

I can see why kids love them so much
, he thought. But at the same time, a very adult fear rose from somewhere deep inside, a fear of anonymity and disguise, of
inhumanness
, and he remembered reading somewhere that
everyone
is afraid of clowns.

“Nice day!” the clown said, jumping up and spilling rice across the ground. She danced over to Cain, long shoes slapping on the pavement, arms waving high and low. “Lovely day for catching a sunbeam—shall I get you one? Oh, I see you already have one!” She reached for Cain, tickled his ear, and pulled her hand back trailing a long piece of yellow crepe paper. “Put them in your ear and
they'll burn your brain,” the clown said. “Singe it. Scorch it. Melt it, and then someone will smell the burning and come along and eat it!”

Cain was speechless. His heart thumped, everything told him to back away and leave, but at the same time he found the display compulsive. Such sensory overload from one person, and Cain knew the siren was nowhere inside him, no threat at all.
Maybe I was meant to come this way
, he thought.
Maybe this is good for me
.

The clown turned and bent down in front of him, pulling her baggy trousers tight and wiggling her rump. Then she stood again, performed a perfect forward roll straight through the spilled rice, turned to face him and stuck out her tongue, blowing a shower of glitter into the air.

Cain looked around to see if anyone else was watching. There were a few shadows in the window of the grocer's, but he could not see their faces. Some cars passed along the road, but none of them stopped. For now he had this moment to himself.

What would my father think of this?
Cain thought, and he laughed out loud. Right then, the sense of being his own person was very strong.

“Fuckity-fuck, my tits wobble in this getup,” the clown said, slipping hand over feet in an impressive display of acrobatics.

“Pardon?”

“You heard!” She paused, panting, and Cain saw beads of sweat smearing her complex makeup.

“That's not much of a show for children,” he said.

She shrugged her padded shoulders. “I adjust my
show depending on who's watching. Don't you?”

“I'm not a clown.”

“Not what I meant at all.” She sat down again, kicking the rice container aside, and leaned back against the window of the takeaway. “I'm fucking exhausted. You have no idea how much energy a little stunt like that takes. Fuck!”

Cain was dumbfounded. He heard a door open and two old women came out of the grocer's shop two doors down, glanced at the clown, and walked the other way, twittering like birds. A car came to a standstill at the curbside and disgorged three teenagers. Cain saw the father leaning across the front seats to get a look at the clown. The man caught Cain's gaze, glanced away quickly, floored the accelerator, and pulled off. The three boys smiled, pointed, and started jeering. But then the clown stood and walked their way, and they turned and ran.

She looked back at Cain. “Everyone's afraid of clowns.” Her true smile twisted the painted one into a grotesque grimace, as if she had been struck across the face with an ax.

“Who are you?” he asked, because he could think of nothing else to say.

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” the clown said, wiping her hand on her outfit and offering it for him to shake. “I'm Magenta from Flat Three.”

Cain looked blank, trying to absorb what she had said.

“Flat Three, downstairs from you,” the clown said, frowning, smiling again, shaking her hands and spraying Cain with water from false fingertips. She laughed.

“How do you know me?” he said.

“You've been wandering in and out ever since you arrived yesterday,” she said. “I make it my business to know who's living in the same building as me. That's only sensible. It's only
safe
. I wouldn't want to share a building with a mass murderer, now, would I?”

“I suppose not,” Cain said. Had she been standing behind her door all along? he thought. Watching through the peephole as he passed by, sizing him up, her feet turned at right angles so that her ridiculous shoes did not scratch the door and give her away?

“Well, are you?”

“Pardon?”

“A mass murderer?”

Her appearance had thrown him completely, and now she was playing word games. Surprised and confused though he was, Cain had spent years of his life talking to himself, often not knowing what he was going to say next. Sometimes, it was almost like talking to someone else. He could do word games too.

“Not yet,” he said. “I'm still studying the theory.”

“Ah!” she said, her fake smile startling some pigeons aloft. “A comedian! Excellent. I like a man with a sense of humor.”

His gaze was drawn to her chest again, as if her comment had made her womanhood more visible beneath the baggy clothing.

“Humor is one thing that building lacks. There's George, I suppose . . . but I laugh at him, not with him. Peter has a sense of humor, but he doesn't actually live there.”

“No, he lives in Heaven,” Cain said. Magenta froze. Even her suit was still beneath her outstretched arms. For a second, she was a statue.

“Have you been in there?” she asked, and her question carried so much import, the weight of his answer obviously of great concern to this strange clown.

“No,” Cain said. She seemed to relax a little, but the playfulness had gone. Even her suit seemed deflated, more scruffy and stained than before. “Have you?” he asked.

“Coffee? There's a little café around the corner—they do a great latte, and peach cake to die for.” Magenta turned and started walking away without waiting for an answer. Cain followed. As he walked he thought about whether or not he wanted coffee and cake, his eyes were drawn to her shapely behind, and he realized with a strange stab of guilt that right here and now he was no longer afraid of the siren. With everything that had happened over the past couple of minutes—the colors, the shapes, Magenta's strange talk—it would have struck him by now if it was going to.

Where it had gone, he did not know. But the last thing he was about to do was question it. This was his first full day alone. He was still terrified, but already he was seeing some good signs. This clown woman calmed him in some way he had yet to understand. Perhaps because, other than Peter, she was the first person he had
really
spoken to.

“Or maybe I just want to fuck her,” he muttered, and she spun around and glared at him as if she had heard. But a car was passing and he had barely
whispered, and so no, she could not have heard, never.

His vague guilt at turning away from the challenge of the bustling city was lifting. And his confidence had already taken a boost from this strange encounter. He no longer felt scared, and that was something new.

A car screamed by and tooted its horn, and Cain shrank back against the wall of the café. He cursed himself for the reaction and his eyes watered from sheer anger. The siren remained silent, but it was still taunting him from deep inside, deeper than he would probably ever be able to dig. On his own, at least.

He looked through the café window and saw Magenta at the counter. And he decided that, yes, right now he really wanted coffee and cake.

Cain's father had told him that Pure Sight was the ability to perceive truth. It was not actual sight, but rather knowledge, experience, and certainty. As a concept few considered or knew of it, and of those who did even fewer found themselves anywhere close to possessing it. It saw through—and stripped away—all facets of humanity that tended to bring us close to “civilized.” Civilization, his father said, was an unfortunate by-product of the power of reason.
Do you think we're really here to live together peacefully, spend all our time considering everyone else first?
he asked.
A pride of lions will attack another pride if they intrude on their territory
. He never explained his statements, as if eager for Cain to make out their meanings for himself.

Cain was his father's project. His father wanted him to achieve Pure Sight. He talked about it incessantly, trying to pump its wonder into his son, but Cain was only in his teens when his father died. He was confused, disoriented, badly damaged by the deprived state he had been kept in for all those years. As such, Pure Sight was as remote to him now as the concept of fatherly affection.

Still, since his father died and Cain was taken away from that house, he often wondered just how diligently his subconscious still sought Pure Sight of its own accord.

Cain carried his latte and slice of peach cake to the window seat next to Magenta. She had snatched a handful of paper serviettes from the counter, and now she wiped at her makeup, smearing vibrant colors across her face into a single bland mess. She wiped and wiped, spitting into the paper towels, her hand moving faster.